BAKKER VI: Death comes swirling down

[Besselfunction]

I read something about Hegel today. I'm rather unfamiliar with his philosophy, yet I discovered something interesting. I dont think I really understand Hegel from what I've read but some thoughts stuck in my mind and will try to recapitulate them. My apologies if this turns out to be rubbish. I should mention that I read the text about Hegel in German; my attempts to translate certain words will most certainly be flawed.

Ok:

According to Hegel, self-awareness is a dialectic process and consists of three states:

1. A dreamlike state during which you are only vaguely aware of yourself.

2. The state of self-alienation, during which you perceive an image of yourself but imagine yourself in a different way.

3. The state after you realized that the perceived image and the mental image are in fact the same entity: you. ("state of reconciliation".)

This applies to the human mind. Hegel now applies this to the "spirit of god" which is a synonym for the only absoluteness in our world. He infers that God - like the human mind - is evolving from 1. to 2. to 3.

So, in the beginning God is looking for his identity. In the following process, he looks at himself and is divided into two parts: the observer and the observed. Hegel's theory says: this divided entity is what we perceive as reality! This means: we perceive our reality from God's point of view. At the same time, God is just us perceiving our reality. The two parts of God are nature and the human spirit. When we look at the nature surrounding us, we see what God sees when he looks at himself.

The reconciliation between the two parts is represented by us creating reality. According to Hegel thats done by every process involving our mind.

I was wondering: what does Bakker think of Hegel? And connected to this: isn't the No-God just an entity in state 1. trying to get to 2.? What happens when the No-God reaches the state of reconciliation? And last but not least: who can explain what I was trying to outline above?

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

What I was really trying to say was that I've always thought of the Ark and everything around it as a very alien place. Now I'm wondering to what extent it actually more resembles just another city/stronghold. Is it a large civilization or just a crashed spaceship where a couple twin aliens some nonmen and a few oldass quasi-immortal men sit around and hatch evil plots?

I think I remember reading somewhere that they erected huge fortifications around it.

Well, there once were many thousands of Inchoroi, so they had to have some sort of civilization inside the Ark. Later all almost all died in the wars, and now only two remain. There are also human and Nonmen sorcerers in the Consult, but I suppose it is only a handful, so they don't really need that much.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

Did it ever actually state that there were thousands of Inchoroi? I know that there were certainly more than the two that remain but I don't remember it ever stating a specific number or even an estimate.

In one of Seswatha's dreams in TTT there is a mention of thousands of thousands, IIRC, but it may be an exaggeration. Anyway there was quite a lot of them.

One question on a small section of TTT. I was reading back last night and there's a very small section about a "god-like man" who is running accross terrain and hares and thrushes are scattering in his wake. Then it says something about him laughing though humor was unkown to him. I assume this is Kellhus but it never says so explicitely. It seemed like a strange passage. Kellhus right?

Yes, I don't see how it could be anyone else.

[sologdin]

what does Bakker think of Hegel?

my reading is that PoN is a footnote to hegel that encompasses a loverletter to marxism.

[Shryke]

There's a section in TTT about Akka's dream of Seswatha and co entering Golgotterath. THere's a sense from some bits here and there that the Ark isn't just a ship, it's a .... womb of some sort. And now, it's a dead one. It's rotting. And the Consult have sort of built new structures and such to live in inside it.

I got the impression the place was filled with either human slaves or techne constructs, and that the buildings inside the Ark they lived in where basically at about the same level as the rest of the world (ie - medieval stone building or some such).

[delete this account pls]

The Seswatha dream BoG talks about - I'm pretty sure it's thousands and thousands of Sranc Seswatha saw, not Inchoroi. I got the impression most of the Inchoroi were killed in the wars against the Nonmen, which is why they recruited amongst Men for the Consult.

I think it's safe to say the Inchoroi were a civilisation in themselves when they first 'crashed' though. They had their own King, and the battles against the Nonmen were definitely large scale by the sounds of it.

[Calibandar]

I've always thought one of the most compelling details we get about the Inchoroi is that the Nonmen were unable to communicate with the Inchoroi until the latter "birthed mouths".

Curious.

From the entry on the Cunu-Inchoroi wars you can also see that they were very powerful for the first hundreds of years, because they still possessed the powerful weaponry they brought with them, but then later on "exhausted them" and thus had to rely on other means of war. Plus of course that many had died, and according to Scott those Inchoroi now still alive ( presumably just Aurang and Aurax) no longer have the knowledge to re-create the weapons of old.

[Happy Ent]

Plus of course that many had died, and according to Scott those Inchoroi now still alive ( presumably just Aurang and Aurax) no longer have the knowledge to re-create the weapons of old.

I like to think of it as some kind of crashed Enterprise. All the redshirts die early, after a while, even the useful engineering types get killed in some warp core breach. In end, only Kirk is left. Horny, useless Kirk. Talk a planetary-size computer to self-destruct, but couldn’t fix a communicator if his life depended on it.

[Galactus]

Heh, awesome analogy

[Nerdanel]

I've always viewed the "birthing mouths" thing as meaning nothing more than that the Inchoroi eventually learned to speak the Nonman language. It was just a figure of speech that highlighted how the Nonmen saw themselves as the center of the universe... It is also possible that they and their servants all spoke the same language, and they had some very narrow ideas about what language was supposed to be. Perhaps they could not allow change in their native language since they used it to cast spells.

[Ran]

My own thought is that the "birthing mouths" thing means that the Inchoroi used the tekne to modify themselves to be able to speak as Nonmen (and men) do -- before that, they had no vocal apparatus and communicated with one another in some other way.

They may bioengineer themselves quite readily.

[Calibandar]

Nerdanel

I had the same impression as Ran did; they bio-engineered themselves in order to be able to communicate in the way that the people of Earwa do.

[Antonius Pius]

It seems to me that Achamian has lost faith in Kellhus as the Harbinger by the end of the first trilogy. Does this mean he has lost faith in the Celmomian Prophecy? Does he know believe that the Anasurimbor name that Kellhus brought with him is just a "fortuitous correspondence of cause" as Moenghus would say?

They aren't mutually exclusive... I think Akka still believes, or knows that Kellhus is the Harbinger. But Akka also realizes he is a fraud as a prophet. What it will do for his further beliefs, I don't know. But Akka can't cast the dreams of Seswatha aside. He knows this stuff is true. I think he has just decided that he wants nothing to do with Kelhus anymore.

BTW, didn't Seswatha have a falling out with Celmomas? Maybe that's a mirror event?

Also Kellhus says to Moengues that he is the harbinger. Does Kellhus actually now believe that? That's pretty crazy if the Mandati is now unconvinced and the Dunyain is.

Kellhus does seem to believe in the outside. Maybe he also believes he is the Harbinger. I don't believe he fights the consult just to stop them bringing about death. It's in his own interests to defeat them.

[Shryke]

Achamian, by the end, hates Kellhus. Whether he still thinks he's a prophet? Not sure.

Xinemus' death is the real turning point. After this, he doesn't really believe anymore ("Why can't Kellhus heal?"). But it's not till Cnauir throws it in his face at the end ("Ask yourself, sorceror ... What do you have that he hasn't taken?") that he truly realises it himself.

[Liffguard]

Recently I've been thinking about how Kellhus might try to reconcile the Celmomas prophecy with the whole what-comes-before-determines-what-comes-after thing. We know that Kellhus and the Dunyain themselves have a limited prescience in the form of the probability trance. The trance is theoretically accurate assuming you know all the variables, which of course no-one does. What if Kellhus sees the prophecy as a kind of perfect calculation? Not a case of the future determining the past, as in prophecy, but rather a perfect application of the logos in determining what will come after?

[Nerdanel]

I see prophecy as deity deciding to make sure that something happens and announcing its intention through a human. The future is not violating causality by influencing the past, but a god would have a very good idea of what can be achieved and the disappointment of a false prophecy, so it will strive to only give prophecies it is sure it can make happen, using ambiguous wording if it must.

I think Kellhus's prophecy about victory - and especially the bit about punishing the Shrial Knights that just popped into his head and turned out to decide the course of the entire battle - was from the No-God who had decided to make the Inrithi defeat the Kianene... even if it meant that he had to personally intervene to resurrect Coithus Saubon in the middle of the battle, which I think he did, even if no character in the book realized that last bit.

[Ski the Swift]

... even if it meant that he had to personally intervene to resurrect Coithus Saubon in the middle of the battle, which I think he did, even if no character in the book realized that last bit.

Please explain?

[Nerdanel]

Please explain?

A very curious thing happens to Saubon when he falls down from his horse in the middle of his charge at the plain of Mengedda. For a moment, he sees himself lying on the ground, dead. Then the situation is never referred to again.

Now, Mengedda is a haunted place. People have nightmares there, and skeletons from ancient wars materialize during the night. The souls of everyone who dies there are taken by the No-God. "The soul that encounters Him passes no further." Saubon's near-death experience is the odd one out.

I have a solution though. It hinges on two facts: 1) If Saubon died his remains might materialize out of the blue in the future. 2) If Saubon died his soul would be taken by the No-God. Now put the two together and it suddenly becomes plausible (not proven but plausible) that the No-God could remake Saubon's soul at the point of his death and put Saubon's soul into it. One might think that the No-God is in no condition to act, being dead, and all the strangeness in Mengedda is without purpose. However, consider the case of Kussalt, Saubon's trusted groom, whose dying words were out of his normal character, very cruel, and most importantly italicized. It is as if Kussalt was being possessed by an evil, intelligent entity. That doesn't say the entity was the No-God, but it seems some evil and ultramundane intelligence is capable of affecting things in Mengedda.

Then we have to think about why the No-God would do such a thing. This becomes clearer when we consider that Saubon is declared the Battle-Celebrant and everyone thinks his charge singlehandedly changed the course of the battle. The anomalous event is now revealed to have happened at a crucial moment. Saubon's survival makes the Inrithi triumph over the Kianene, eventually leading the conquest of Shimeh, and also marks Kellhus as a prophet, eventually leading him becoming the Aspect-Emperor. If Saubon had died Kellhus's believability as a prophet would be toasted and the Holy War would be stopped in its tracks. The No-God's long term plans haven't been publicly revealed yet, but resurrecting Saubon would have altered the world's fate in a profound way.

So we have our means and motive. The opportunity is easy. In the midst of the battle, the only person who could have made the distinction between Saubon getting hit on the head, falling off his horse, and dying and Saubon getting hit on the head, falling off his horse, and not getting seriously hurt would be Saubon himself. Oh, and perhaps some of the nearby Kianene, but those were busy fighting and then they all died.

Does anyone have a better explanation? I know accepting this explanation would change for many people how the view Kellhus and the No-God. I for one think the No-God is smart and aware and Kellhus is his servant.

[Fulcrumvale]

*snip*

What he said, with one minor exception.

On the No-God/Consult’s motive for resurrecting Saubon, I don’t think that it was anything as far-sighted as making sure that Kellhus becomes Aspect-Emperor. At the time, the Consult was still operating under the assumption that the detection of their skin-spies was in some way connected to the Cishaurim because of Moengus’s killing of their agents in Shimeh, which meant that they wanted the Cishaurim destroyed. The best way they saw to do this was to have the Holy War succeed—ergo, Saubon needed to survive that charge.

[Laserkatten]

I have two questions.

1. What do the non-men look like?

2. What do sranc look like?